Final four chosen for Best British Mobile Startup.

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Two London based tech startups have successfully fought off competition from over 100 other startups to get one step closer to winning KPMG Presents: Best British Mobile Startup 2016, presented by Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, in Barcelona later this month.

Eight tech London based startups took to the stage last night to go head to head for the last two remaining places in the finals which will take place on 23rd February in Barcelona.

What3words and Teskalabs were chosen by a panel made up of Bindi Karia (startup expert, connector and advisor), Gi Fernando (entrepreneur and angel investor) and Robert Dighero (Passion Capital) as the finalists and will compete against Bath based EZEducation and VST Enterprises from Media City in Manchester for the Best British Mobile Startup 2016 title.

The competition organised by KPMG’s High Growth Technology Group saw pitching competitions take place in Manchester, Reading and London to find four outstanding finalists from over 100 applications to the competition. The prize on offer is to present on stage at the ‘Four Years From Now’ technology startup conference (“4YFN”) at Mobile World Congress 2016, the largest annual gathering for the mobile industry where the winner will be announced.

Commenting on the competition, Patrick Imbach who leads KPMG’s High Growth Technology Group in Shoreditch said :

“To have to choose four finalists from the huge number of really good applicants for this award was very tough but we believe they best demonstrate the wealth of innovative startups that the UK has on offer right now.

“Contestants represent a cross section of the UK’s mobile startup ecosystem covering everything from Wearables and Healthtech to Fintech and EDtech. Some of these companies are already making a huge impact in their fields, others are hidden gems getting ready to reveal themselves to the world; undoubtedly, all of them are doing fantastic things and we are excited to have them be part of the competition.

“The judges have a difficult task ahead of them in choosing a winner from this outstanding group of startups.”

The four finalists will travel to Barcelona at the end of month for the grand final which will be opened by Ed Vaizey, UK Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, who will also be presenting the award later that afternoon.

Mobile World Congress is the largest annual gathering for the mobile industry, organised by the GSMA, and held in the Mobile World Capital of Barcelona. Last year the event attracted over 94,000 attendees, thousands of which were C level leaders of their businesses.

Featuring 140 guest speakers and more than 3,500 press and industry analysts, the event is the place to be for anyone operating in the mobile industry. This year CEO guest speakers from ARM, China Mobile, WPP, Telefónica and BT have been confirmed. It will take place on 22‎-25 February 2016.

Westbourne Park based What3words is a universal addressing system based on a 3mx3m global grid. Each of the 57 trillion 3mx3m squares in the world has been pre-allocated a fixed & unique 3 word address. Their geocoder turns geographic coordinates into these 3 word addresses & vice-versa.

North London based TeskaLabs provides enterprise grade security solutions for industrial and consumer mobile and IoT applications. The company produces robust and efficient plug-and-play information security platform for any connected device offers an active, up-to-date security layer via software, hardware and/or SaaS products, based on industry best practices.

Bath based EZ Education was founded in 2012 with the aim of enhancing children’s learning through personalised, adaptive learning programs. Its founders, Nicola Chilman and Tom Minor, are experienced classroom teachers and educators, and their insights as to how children learn as individuals are the basis on which EZ Education’s apps are built. Their first product – DoodleMaths – is the top-selling maths app for primary-aged children in the UK.

VST Enterprises was founded in 2012 after many years of research and innovation of consumer technology that could revolutionise the day-to-day lives of individuals from all walks of life. Based at Media City The 'VSPlatform', is an intuitive content delivery platform, 1-click payment mechanism/gateway and data management platform. The solution allows data mining of enhanced analytics such as 'who, what, when & where' a VCode was interacted with and more importantly how a user interacted with the brand once the VS Platform portal was open.

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